It Could Have Been Us
by Fighting Chicken
Summary: In a world where Kim and Ron didn't end up together, how do they handle a brush with death when they get home to their significant others?


1Don't own, please don't sue...I don't have deep enough pockets to make it worthwhile.

--

"Zis plan for vorld domination ist kaput! Thanks to you, Kim Possible, I must go off and schtart from schcratch. Fortunately for mich, you vill be buried in ze rubble of zis lair!" Professor Dementor had just seen his latest device designed to bring the world to its knees literally go up in smoke. In response, he press the Big Red Button on the wall, and the sound of wailing sirens echoed through the air. Kim Possible and her partner in world saving, Ron Stoppable, had been in a similar sitch dozens of times before. But this time, something just seemed different, and not in a good way. Kim, Ron and a couple of Dementor's henchmen made it from the lair just in time to see it disappear in a cloud of dust and fire. Debris rained down on them, and just as Kim and Ron found a small cave in which to avoid the remnants of Dementor's lair, they heard a sickening crunch, accompanied by a slight squishing or gurgling noise.

Kim was the first to look. Her fears regarding the source of the sound were soon realized, and even though she braced for the possibility, the sight before her left her sickened and horrified. A fragment of an I-beam had run cleanly through one of the henchmen and had embedded itself in the torso of another, forming a kind of macabre shish kebab. As soon as it was safe to emerge, Kim ran to them, but arrived just in time to hear their last raspy breaths. Holding back tears and vomit, she approached as close as she could. The one on top had, with his last ounce of strength, slid his wedding ring into the palm of his hand, while the one on the bottom had written "Kat" and part of an "I" in the blood-soaked ground next to him. Ron had come up behind her, and was not handling himself any better. He put a trembling hand on Kim's shoulder in an attempt to comfort the both of them, but to no avail.

"Wade, is our ride going to be here anytime soon?"

"Just about five...what happened?!?" Wade had seen a lot in his years working for Kim and Ron, but he was horrified by the expressions on their faces.

"I'd rather not talk about it," said Kim wearily. Wade didn't even think about asking her to elaborate. Soon, a Global Justice helicopter arrived for the duo. They climbed on board, still in a daze. The ride home was made largely in silence, although at various times, Kim and Ron both seemed to mumble things under their breath, something that sounded almost like, "It could have been us." Occasionally, Kim would squeeze Ron's hand, and he would do likewise.

But most of the time, Kim spent the trip back home playing around with the large engagement ring on her hand, while Ron spent time alternating handling his wedding band and a small piece of film that he had taken with him on this mission. For a long time, everyone assumed that Ron and Kim would be giving each other their rings, but that was not how things turned out.

Everything changed during Kim and Ron's sophomore year of high school. That year, Joshua Wendell Mankey's family relocated to Middleton, and within a week had half of the cheerleaders smitten, but especially Kim, who was often rendered blind, deaf and dumb in his presence. Eventually, he accepted Kim's request to accompany her to a school dance. They dated on and off for the next two years, but when he went off to college, the two of them drifted apart for a while.

A fateful, unplanned trip to Camp Wannaweep led to similar consequences for Ron. His heroism that night had caught the eye of one of Kim's teammates. Ron and Tara's relationship did not truly blossom, however, until after the second time that Ron saved everyone. The biggest obstacle came not from their enemies, but from their friends. Kim warned Ron against dating a cheerleader while he was still The Mad Dog, while Bonnie continued to lecture Tara about the food chain, especially once their junior prom rolled around. After Bonnie's attempt to break Ron and Tara up was shot down in flames, everyone agreed it was not a question of if, but when.

"When" came a few months after Ron and Tara graduated from college. Kim was the maid of honor, and caught the bouquet. In a coincidence that seemed straight out of a chick flick, she ran into Josh the very next day. They made up for lost time, and within six months of their reunion, he proposed to her in front of a crowd gathered to witness the unveiling of Josh's latest public art installation. Kim enthusiastically accepted, and their wedding was coming up within the next month. Kim had originally wanted the wedding to be a couple of months later, but a call from Tara a couple of nights after her engagement prompted her to move the ceremony up. Fortunately, Kim was early enough in the planning process for this to be possible.

All the while that Kim and Ron's personal lives and mission lives were getting less and less intertwined, the missions themselves were fewer but more dangerous. They had both spent a lot of time training with Global Justice, and Will Du had long since stopped referring to them as "amateurs." The villains were by and large less theatrical than the likes of Dr. Drakken, and were increasingly trading in their death rays for rocket launchers and AK-47s. The question of next of kin came up more than once over the course of their recent adventures. Ron in particular, given the adventure that he and Tara were going to go on in about two months, seemed to worry more and more about his own safety, even though his performance was still up to his usual standard in Agent Du's eyes.

Kim and Ron thought about all these things on the ride home, not because they were particularly pleasant, but because they were far more pleasant than the alternative. Thinking about what might have been in their more distant past, while not especially productive, was certainly superior to thinking about what might have been if they were a few seconds later, if they had been where those two henchmen had been, if they were the ones whose blood soaked the soil.

--

The first stop was Kim and Josh's house in Upperton. Kim hugged Ron good-bye, and walked up to the door, still shaken by the day's events. Josh had obviously been waiting for her for some time, and yet he seem unconcerned, as if he knew that Kim would be coming home victorious and alive.

"Hey Kim, how was..." Josh was unable to finish his question before Kim silenced him with a kiss. She backed away for a second, and Josh could see something in Kim's eyes. Something he never liked seeing in anyone's eyes, especially not those of the woman he would be marrying in a few weeks. Before he could ask about what had happened, Kim buried her face in his shoulder. She seemed to be sobbing quietly. Josh thought it best to simply comfort her until she got what she needed to get out of her system. Maybe after that he could do a little more questioning. Had something happened between her and Ron? He usually stopped inside for a little while after their missions. By this time, Kim seemed to have recovered to the point where Josh felt comfortable attempting to engage in conversation.

"Um, Kim? Do you want to talk about the today's mission?"

"Let's just say that it really made me appreciate what I have now and what I will have." In one sentence, Kim was able to sum up how she felt and what she had dealt with today without having to dredge up any horrific details of their near-death experience that day. And yet, when she sat back down, she seemed to still be whispering something under her breath. Josh moved a little closer to his fiancé to try to figure out what she was saying. A double major in visual arts and public administration had little need to take anything beyond a basic psychology course in college, but he knew that whatever she was saying was probably germane to the current situation. He was able to pick up what she had been saying, and suddenly everything made a lot more sense.

--

The ride from Upperton down to Middleton seemed a lot shorter than Ron remembered it being. Then again, Ron and the pilot didn't have to contend with traffic, or stoplights, or much of anything other than their own thoughts. Ron was doing everything in his power to keep from thinking too hard about the day's events. Yet five words kept echoing through his head, playing on an infinite, seemingly unstoppable loop. "It could have been us. It could have been us."

Those words seemed to gradually fade away, although the feeling that powered the loop was still there. The chopper landed on his front lawn; no one thought anything much of it, since Ron often arrived home after a mission in this manner. He climbed out of the helicopter, and walked slowly up to his house's front door. His wife was there to greet him when he entered, but he walked by without so much as touching her, a task that in recent months had become more difficult, given changes in their lives. That sent up an immediate red flag in Tara Stoppable's mind, not out of anger, but out of concern. She followed him into the living room, where he had poured himself a rather large glass of scotch. This alone was not a source of concern; Ron occasionally had a drink or two to unwind after a hard day on the job or a mission. But usually Ron enjoyed his ethanol, and this time he still seemed troubled. Fortunately, Tara knew how to cheer him up most of the time. She unbuttoned the top button of her blouse and sat down on the arm of his chair, almost in his lap. Ron again barely acknowledged her.

"That bad, eh?" said Tara, getting back up, which had gotten a bit harder for her lately. Ron put his drink down, got up and embraced his wife, not saying a word. He kept himself from breaking down completely, mainly to keep Tara from joining him.

"Thanks. I needed that," Ron and Tara said simultaneously.

--

"So, we're still on for next month, right?" Josh asked his fiancé.

"You bet," replied Kim, who was feeling about two hundred percent better than she did just a few minutes ago. "I would not compress six months of planning into four months only to throw it all away just because I'm dwelling on worst case scenarios. And I'm not going to stop saving the world either."

"Not until you end up like Tara," Josh added.

"I guess we have different interpretations of 'I can do anything.'"

"We'll see about that," Josh laughed, a bit apprehensively.

--

"I hope Kim is not still bitter about us pushing up her wedding," said Tara.

"KP probably would have finished the planning by now anyway. KM is really going to sound weird. Also, is anything possible for a Mankey?"

"Not to mention the fact that it would really tweak her if our son decided he wanted out during the ceremony." Somehow Tara and Ron's son knew he was being talked about, and made his presence known with a few rather vigorous kicks. "Ooh, that was a doozy. I'm thinking I've got a future punter in here." Ron rested his hand on his wife. The loop that kept playing in his head faded to nothing. It could have been them, but it wasn't.

--

Notes: This is my first attempt to write anything particularly angsty. Emotional anything has never been my forte, and probably never will be. This is basically a synthesis of two ideas that drifted through my head a while back. Thank you for reading. Reviews are appreciated and generally receive replies.


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